I've never heard of anybody holding a Capoeira only full contact match, nor of any particular school that does a lot of contact sparring.

On the other hand, it's actually not all that uncommon to see Capoeira guys entering Vale Tudo tournaments in Brazil. The results are about what you'd expect...sometimes they win. Usually, they lose in fairly spectacular form.

Most of the time, the ones that do ok in Vale Tudo show obvious signs of having crosstrained in some kind of full contact Kickboxing and some kind of submission grappling. In that case, what you're really looking at is someone who's primarily exploiting a phenomenal fitness base and just adding a few unconventional kicks and defensive movements into an otherwise fairly conventional MMA package.

The roda in the end can be full contact with two people are thrown into a circle dancing, kicking, and performing cartwheels.My wife and I tried out a Capoeira class a few weeks ago and I just about knocked her out.

One novice overdoing it on another, in any style, doesn't really mean much. The Holy Grail we're looking for is a capoeira school that can reliably train students to take on trained (and hopefully not just in capoeira), resisting opponents.

As fun, cool and historically interesting as capoeira is, threads on capoeira are off-topic for the WMA Forum. "Western Martial Arts" does not mean "all martial arts from outside Asia"; that's exactly the same mistake made on MAP and other MA forums.

I've seen some Capoiera knock out videos but strictly speaking, the ideal in a Capoiera Roda or "spar" is no contact- that is actually the goal, to be able to move well enough and be in harmony with your partner/opponent enough that neither is hit.

Remember the history of it, that this was trained by slaves who disguised their self-defense techniques in what appeared to be a dance. Theoretically speaking the skills/power/etc learned could then be taken out of that form and used to fight.

As fun, cool and historically interesting as capoeira is, threads on capoeira are off-topic for the WMA Forum. "Western Martial Arts" does not mean "all martial arts from outside Asia"; that's exactly the same mistake made on MAP and other MA forums.

Most of the time, the ones that do ok in Vale Tudo show obvious signs of having crosstrained in some kind of full contact Kickboxing and some kind of submission grappling. In that case, what you're really looking at is someone who's primarily exploiting a phenomenal fitness base and just adding a few unconventional kicks and defensive movements into an otherwise fairly conventional MMA package.

Axe Capoeira is a group of schools that also train MMA fighters. You will see them having experience in grappling and takedowns in addition to adapting their capoeira for a fighting situation. The 20 second KO from above is from one of the Axe Cap. fighters. Here is another video from the same group. It's pretty much how you described it would look like. Unconvetional kicks and movements paired with grappling skills.

As fun, cool and historically interesting as capoeira is, threads on capoeira are off-topic for the WMA Forum. "Western Martial Arts" does not mean "all martial arts from outside Asia"; that's exactly the same mistake made on MAP and other MA forums.